Some time back, I read that the shape of the cell does not come from its DNA, but from the cell it divides from – based on environmental factors, chemical gradients and the like. I suspect that the same is true of our values. They are not programmed in us or revealed to us as much as inherited from our community. Yes, we internalize those values in different ways and to different degrees – but still, we get our values from our environment.
As a result of our experiences and perceptions, we have the ability to modify those inherited values – though perhaps not as much as we’d like to think. Many studies have shown that our background and education are far more predictive of our opinions than any other factor. We rationalize our values as if they are based on facts, when in reality we are reflecting the values gained from our community and life experience.
One reason to value intact families and healthy communities (in which the regard for the rights of minorities and the weak is valued), is avoid the alternative – increasing violence and selfishness in communities where the weak are exploited, and minority voices are silenced. We chose values that give us the kind of community we wish to live in, and attempt to restrain those who would build a community that is destructive to our values. Simple, right? So the values we cherish and pass on are pretty important. And like all of life, it is the values we live out that make a lasting impression. Does our community embrace freedom? Reward merit? Embrace diversity? Celebrate charity? Protect the weak? Think about the consequences of its actions? Then these values are what will be passed on. Whatever we say we base our morality on, it will look like the values we actually live out.
From this perspective, absolute right and wrong does not come into it – because absolutes justify our community practice. Like Samuel Clement’s War Prayer illustrates, we invoke absolutes to endorse our actions far more often than to challenge them. Studies show that we even we tend to think of ourselves as more ethical that do those around us (we can’t all be above average, can we?). What is more, the same ethical sources (religion, philosophy, tradition, etc.) in practice embrace a wide range of behavior, with no way to successfully arbitrate who has it right and who has it wrong. So even if we could agree on an absolute standard of morality (which we can’t), and a consistent way to interpret that standard (which we don’t), we’d still view ourselves as meeting that standard more often that we actually do.
So would a dictatorial, slave-owning, misogynistic community, lacking substantial civil liberties or social safety net be wrong? Interestingly, these are descriptions of many fundamentalist religious communities – and since they are endorsed by God, how can effective theistic arguments be put forward to reject them? Yes, this community model is rejected (at least in parts) by many religious proponents, but what these religious defenders of liberal democracy actually do is to clothe enlightenment arguments (modern community values) in religious language – re-imagining faith for modern sensibilities.
In other words, values are based on a community consensus. This is why it is so important that liberal democratic values be articulated and defended. What is at stake is the very definition of good and evil, right and wrong. No source – religion, philosophy, science or culture, can provide an absolute standard of morality. Such a standard has never existed, and can never exist (if you doubt this, just survey the various understandings of right and wrong practiced by various religions over time and from place-to place. Even though segments within this diverse group base their competing claims on the same revelations and sacred traditions, very different ideas of morality, community, fairness and justice emerge).
What can and does exist is a series of overlapping cultural practices – our values – that are then justified by appeal to tradition, or reason or faith. Humans consciously engineer their sense of morality; we cannot afford to let that engineering run on autopilot, or worse, be hijacked for economic, political or religious opportunism.
For example, the ongoing consumerisation of culture is a conscious effort to change our community values. Not because anyone thinks that there is any moral or ethical value in consuming more and more, or in investing one’s sense of self in the things we own or consume, but because it serves the economic interests of corporations. This change has come about, not because of a religious revelation or because a group of philosophers or elders or community leaders urged this path on us – it has come about because people with money have undertaken an orchestrated campaign to change our behavior (though only to make more money). This change has fundamentally shifted the values of most everybody it has reached. When religious movements reject the “westernization” of their culture, they are not primarily talking about the sex and violence and personal freedoms of the West (though these may be some of the most tangible exports). They are talking about the switch in self-identity from one who primarily defines themselves in relationship to god, to an identity defined by what they consume. Though this is a classic conflict, the global consumer culture is exerting pressure in ways never before possible – resulting in unprecedented secularization, even within religious communities.
We have been experimenting with an economic theory that holds above all that markets are rational, and that they work like an invisible hand to provide the best possible economic system for the largest group of people. Perhaps what we have neglected to notice is that community is the source of our values, and when you change the community, you change the values.
One of the trends fueling the resurgence of conservative religion is the desire to find models for community – and values – that work. What remains to be seen is if we can rediscover positive community values without reverting to the often irrational, authoritarian models rooted in theocracies.
